The top House Republican overseeing government spending said Friday that President Barack Obama’s emergency funding request to respond to the crisis at the Texas border is “too much.”

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) told reporters that his panel is scouring through the numbers in Obama’s $3.7 billion supplemental ask, but indicated that the funding level will have to be cut to get House approval.

“It’s too much money,” Rogers said of Obama’s request, which he sent to Congress earlier this week. “We don’t need it. Secondly, a lot of what he’s requesting is being considered in the regular bill process.”

Much of the funding depends on whether Congress decides to alter a 2008 anti-trafficking law that effectively makes it more difficult to deport children who come here illegally from countries that do not border the United States — a measure at the heart of the congressional debate.

Though not explicating endorsing a change to the 2008 law, Rogers said doing so would “greatly change the dynamics of what we have to spend money for in terms of taking care of these refugees.” A working group established by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) already has endorsed revising the law, as has the speaker himself.

But amending the law would run into stiff resistance from liberal and Latino lawmakers, who are urging Congress not to make any changes that will limit protections for children fleeing dangerous circumstances back home in central America.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said during a press conference hosted by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Friday that he will not vote for emergency funding measures if it’s paired with changes to the 2008 law that would effectively make it easier to send these unaccompanied children back home.

Hispanic lawmakers on Friday strongly criticized any potential changes to the law — a key condition of congressional Republicans to secure the emergency funding. Its members will head to the White House in the coming days to press President Barack Obama on this issue, said the caucus’s chairman, Ruben Hinojosa (D-Texas).

“When we see these children, we see the faces of our own children,” Gutierrez said. “We see the faces of our own nieces and nephews. We see the faces of our community, and we’re not going to tolerate the ones that want to exploit them for political gain and demonize them.”

One of the Hispanic caucus’s own members, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), has been trying to write legislation with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) that seeks to revise the trafficking law so that children from noncontiguous countries are treated similarly as those who come from Mexico or Canada.

The Texas duo plan to introduce the legislation — which they’ve called the Helping Unaccompanied Minors and Alleviating National Emergency, or HUMANE, Act — next week. Aside from equal treatment of all children, regardless of country of origin, their bill includes requirements that facilities holding them be kept in “humane” conditions, and the lawmakers also say their legislation will keep due process protections for the unaccompanied minors.

But those efforts earned a stern scolding from Cuellar’s colleagues on Friday.

“Henry Cuellar does not represent the Congressional Hispanic Caucus,” Hinojosa said. “He’s a Blue Dog, he comes to the meetings once in a long time … make it clear. Cuellar does not speak for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the many other caucuses who are united with us.”

Meanwhile, Rogers, the Appropriations chairman, declined to cite an appropriate level of funding to provide resources for border enforcement and the influx of unaccompanied children trying to enter the United States illegally, saying he hopes to have a number next week.

The Republican-led House is currently working through the 12 government funding measures, completing six of them. Much of Obama’s funding request is directed to agencies within the Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services, and the full House has not yet taken up appropriations bills for them.

The Democratic-led Senate has not completed any appropriations bills this year.

But Rogers acknowledged that some of Obama’s funding requests are emergencies and will need to be dealt with by lawmakers on Capitol Hill “immediately.”